


Extreme Rafting For Dummies

by Slybrarian



Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Culture
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slybrarian/pseuds/Slybrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Masaq' Orbital was famous for its unusually dangerous extreme sports, even compared to the rest of the Culture. Under normal circumstances Canda-Onteriasa Merdith Rodney M'Kay dam Tronto would never have anything to do with that sort of thing. Unfortunately, his partner John had other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extreme Rafting For Dummies

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fusion with Iain M. Bank's Culture series, and draws several lines of dialog as well as the setting from Look to Windward. I highly recommend that you read it, although there's no need to have done so to understand this. No SGA spoilers and only teensy Culture ones.

Maybe it was a bit incongruous for Rodney to complain about his present situation. After all, as a crew member of a GCU specializing in especially tricky situations (read: a Special Circumstances ship), his entire life revolved around getting into various dangerous situations and a rather large amount of running in terror. Still, the entire point of _Atlantis Rising From the Deep_'s stopover at Masaq' was so the crew could have some shore leave and relax after a particularly strenuous set of missions, and so Rodney had quite reasonably expected to do something relaxing. Unfortunately, in what had to have been a momentary lapse of sanity on Rodney's part, he had promised to go along with his partner / lover / whatever-the-hell John on a 'fun side trip'. By the time Rodney realized what was going on, it was too late to back out without causing John to sulk, which undoubtedly would ruin the entire vacation.

That, in short, was how Rodney found himself on a fucking _raft_ hurtling down a fucking _river_ of fucking _**molten lava**_.

"Shit shit shit," Rodney said in three different languages as he desperately pushed and pulled at his oar, doing his part to keep the raft from hitting the sides of the channel or a rock or something else, an event which would probably cause it to capsize and send them all to grisly and exceedingly painful deaths.

Beside him, John cackled with glee and shouted, "This is great!"

They were on one of the unfinished Plates of the orbital, where molten masses of rock were allowed to flow so that a somewhat-natural geological layer could be formed before rivers, soil, plants, and other such niceties were placed on top of it. The Culture being the Culture, thousands of years ago someone had hit upon the idea of this being a great opportunity for a new sport. Masaq' being Masaq', the inhabitants took it to an even greater level and thus lava-rafted completely unaided by field technology or any particularly clever feat of material science. They said that it made the experience more authentic and exciting if you used equipment only barely up to the challenge. The only protection used beyond thick clothes and gloves were large amounts of water to keep cool with and breath masks, as even enthusiasts had to admit that getting your lungs scorched by blazing hot air was about as fun as it sounded.

For all those reasons, lava rafting was called a minimal-safety-factor sport. Rodney called it utter lunacy.

"I'm going to kill you," Rodney screamed at John. "I'll rip your balls off and shove them down your throat!"

John gave him a thumbs-up and a manic grin. "You know you love it!"

"Kill you! Repeatedly!"

At least he would eventually. For the moment he was too busy trying not to die and being scared shitless, even after glanding a metric fuckload of _Calm_. All the drug seemed to do was allow him to observe things even more clearly, which really wasn't much help at in the least. For example, he could perfectly see the expressions and body language of the rest of the rafters, which showed a dismaying mixture of excitement, thrill, and terror. There were two dozen others on the raft with Rodney and John. A couple were shipmates - John's lackey Lorne and Rodney's friend Radek, both of whom Rodney had thought possessed more sense than the get into a situation like this. The rest were locals except for Kabe, who was a Homomdan ambassador. Like all of his species Kabe was three-legged, roughly pyramidal in shape, over three meters tall, and glossy black. This all made him look like some kind of odd statue when he wasn't moving or speaking. Currently he sat in the middle of the raft so as not to upset the balance with his rather considerable weight, which would be a Very Bad Thing.

Distinctly missing from the group was the other half of Rodney and John's team. While Rodney normally would have been loathe to admit it, he desperately missed Ronon. The psychotic combat drone had an annoying tendency to hit Rodney with sticks at random times, supposedly for training purposes, but at least it protected him in the field. Rodney missed Teyla even more, because not only was it better company but it also could (occasionally) talk John out of his more idiot ideas, like this one. Unfortunately, the two of them were spending their vacation elsewhere on the orbital, doing whatever it was combat drones did when not killing things and saving Rodney from a cruel and fiery fate.

"Trust me, you'll thank me when you're done," John told him with a laugh.

Rodney pointedly ignored him, although that only left him with more time to listen to the other fools around him. Two were arguing about whether you fell onto or into lava, due to the relative density of molten rock and fragile human flesh. Two more were trying to detach an oar that had caught fire - the oar was made out of _wood_ because that lent a sense of the _corporeal_ to rafting, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. One particularly stupid cretin was apparently convinced that this was all a simulation instead of being horribly, horribly real. Of course, in addition to all that were the various cries of pain and panic that you would expect to hear on a twelve-by-four-meter ceramic raft careening down a river of _**lava**_.

After only a dozen or so seconds, Rodney gave up on the entire ignoring thing. "Trust you?! I trusted you when you said we'd have a fun time and now look at me! The sun will explode before I ever trust you again!"

John looked hurt for a moment, but just as Rodney was starting to feel like shit for saying that John's grin returned, wilder than ever. "Funny you should say that! Did you know that this system's star is a bit unstable?"

"Are you serious?" Rodney said, completely aghast and distracted from his present situation for a moment by the shear insanity of a sticking an Orbital with fifty or so billion people living on it around anything but a completely stable star. As they'd entered the system he had thought there had been an unusual amount flare activity, but he'd never even considered the possibility that it'd been business as usual.

That distraction was short lived, because near the bow Lorne called out, "Tunnel ahead! Going to get hotter! Ship oars, mind your heads!"

"Oh, shit," Rodney had time to say, before the raft plunged into the lava tube. The raft had a protective covering - if you could call a thin foil of aluminized plastic 'protective' - that was supposed to shield them from the heat radiating off the ceiling, but the temperature immediately spiked anyways. People began dousing themselves with water even more copiously than before and coils of steam filled the air. Judging by the sounds coming from around him, Rodney could tell that most of the others were now enjoying the experience about as much as he was.

"My hair!"  
"Oh! I want to go home!"  
"Water bucket!"  
"My nose, my nose!"  
"Stop whining."  
"Good grief!"  
"This hurts!"  
"Well, stop it hurting!"  
"Hub, zap me out!"

John, of course, let loose with that stupid braying laugh of his and elbowed Rodney. "This is just like that time on Taonas!"

"We nearly died on Taonas!" Rodney reminded him. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen when this piece of crap flips over and we all go flying into the lava?"

"Isn't it technically magma right now, since we're underground?"

"That's beside the point!" Rodney took a deep, slightly painful breath so that he could explain in exquisite detail what would happen. Most of the people on the raft would die after, say, a very painful second or two, but with the exception of a few one-timers they'd all be restored from backups fairly quickly. On the other hand, Rodney and John - and now that Rodney thought about it Lorne and Radek as well - were stuffed so full of Special Circumstances supertech augments that their well-protected brains would probably stay conscious the entire time as their vulnerable flesh caught fire and their bones melted. Rodney rather imagined that even with the pain turned off the feeling couldn't possibly be pleasant. Then, because their implants would be screaming for help, either Masaq' Hub or _Atlantis_ would displace their charred skulls into a medical unit, and they would spend the rest of their hard-earned leave waiting for new bodies to grow.

Sadly, Rodney did not get to inform John of all that, because Lorne chose that moment to call, "Nearly out... uh-oh. We've got hang-spikes."

Instantly Rodney's gaze snapped forward and sure enough he saw that the exit of the tunnel was strung with low-hanging protrusions, like teeth in a gaping mouth. Some brilliant spark shouted, "Spikes! Get down!" but Rodney was way ahead of them and already on the deck. The spikes caught the foil cover and ripped it away. An intense wave of heat rolled over the raft and all around Rodney people screamed, and he possibly might have yelled in a manly manner as well.

Rodney's blood ran cold as he realized John had been one of those screaming. It had been more of a yelp, really, and it had quickly been cut off, but none the less it wasn't possibly a good sign. With that moron, a yelp could mean anything from "I fell over and landed on my ass" to "oh dear, I seem to have misplaced my arm." When Rodney rolled on his side to look, he saw that when the giant Homomdan had thrown himself flat he'd landed on John's leg, which had promptly snapped under Kabe's weight.

"Was that your leg?" Kabe asked as he levered himself back upright.

John held his left leg and grimaced. "Yeah. I think it's broken."

"Yes. I think it is, too. I'm very sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

John rolled his eyes. "Try not falling back like that again, not while I'm here."

"I think I can guarantee that. I do apologize, I was told to sit in the center of the deck. Can you move?"

"No, he can't," Rodney snapped as he crawled over to John. Even though he knew the answer, he still asked John, "Are you all right?"

"Leg's broken. I'll live."

"My fault," Kabe said, and Rodney glared up at him. Rationally, Rodney knew that it was perfectly understandable that Kabe had been a bit indiscriminate about where he landed, as his head would have been about level with the spikes. However, Rodney was not feeling terribly rational, and he felt a rather powerful urge to laser the Homomdan in half using the CREWS fingernails SC had added to his body.

"I'll get a splint," Rodney said instead.

He climbed to his feet and somewhat shakily made his way to the lockers at the rear. The air was filled with the smell of singed flesh and hair, and Rodney's own jacket was still smoking slightly. He gingerly felt at his head and discovered that his hair was uneven and crispy in places. He was also missing both eyebrows. As he returned with the medical kit he glanced forward to see how his other shipmates were doing, and quickly spotted the two of them. Lorne had his arms around Radek and was holding him tight, and while Radek looked suitably shell-shocked Lorne was already starting to grin slightly. Other people around the raft were also comforting each other, although a majority were either sobbing hysterically or so blissed out on glanded drugs that they just stared skyward happily.

"Still having fun?" Rodney asked as he sat down next to John.

"Oh, yeah," John said. He was laying flat on his back now and, judging by his happy grin, he'd had enough pain for now and had anesthetized himself. "Definitely."

Rodney stared at him, then grumpily said, "That figures."

"Do you know what the best part is?"

"What?"

"All this danger does great things with the body. Even with all the mods and glands, it still triggers all sorts of stuff deep in the lizard brain. You know, fight or flight instincts and all that."

"And the point is...?" Rodney replied with a flat voice. He slapped the nanotech splint on John's ankle and watched it ooze its way up his leg.

"So there's some other instincts that it triggers, too." John leered at Rodney.

If he was drunk or high enough, Rodney might admit wasn't the best at interpreting that sort of thing in social settings. However, even he could instantly take that familiar look, recall a quite a few past incidents, and put two and two together to come up with, "We-nearly-died sex?"

John grinned, reached up to grasp Rodney's jacket, and pulled Rodney down to next to him. "Exactly."

"Maybe this rafting thing does have a few good points," Rodney admitted.

He started to lean in to kiss John, but the moment was ruined by Lorne shouting out, "Fuck, _rapids_!"


End file.
